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Officers discovered the presenter naked in the garden as a female guest swam in the nude in his pool. Police warned Hall to keep the noise down and left the party.

Yesterday Lord Patten told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: 'Plainly there was something about the celebrity culture in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s which meant people were prepared apparently to turn a blind eye to behaviour that wasn't just eccentric but thoroughly unpleasant.'

MPs and Hall's victims have called on the BBC to investigate the former commentator and news presenter after he pleaded guilty to assaulting 13 girls, the youngest of whom was nine, between 1967 and 1986.

The review by Dame Janet Smith into Jimmy Savile with also investigate how the former It's A Knockout host gained access to his victims

Hall was awarded an OBE for his services to broadcasting and charity last year

Despite allegations some of Hall's victims were abused on BBC premises, Lord Patten ruled out a separate inquiry, saying the Dame Janet Smith review into the Savile scandal would be widened instead.

He added: 'We have to provide answers which will satisfy people that we have been prepared to deal with our own dirty washing.'

The National Association for People Abused in Childhood charity said: 'The BBC gave Hall unfettered opportunities to carry out his abuse, and owes it to his victims to open a new inquiry that can scrutinise his behaviour and the colleagues who may have helped him.'

Jimmy Savile's time at the BBC is being reviewed by Dame Janet Smith

Conservative MP Rob Wilson said: 'My gut instinct is the BBC are not using the Smith Review to get to the truth and are instead using it to do the minimum necessary to carry on as before.'

Yesterday, a former colleague, Linda McDougall, said BBC bosses must have known about his behaviour.

She said she was sexually harassed almost every day during the four years she worked with Hall on regional programme Look North in the late 1960s, but was told by watching staff 'not to make such a fuss'.

She said: 'If I knew, if others knew, I cannot imagine those who were our bosses did not know.

'He was offensive and seemed unable to talk to a woman without touching her.'

Lying low at his £2million mansion at the weekend, married Hall, 83, was feeling sorry for himself, saying: 'I feel so rough; I feel like death I am afraid.

'All you can do is wish me the best for the future.'

He is being backed by his family, with son Daniel Hall, 50, a solicitor, paying tribute to 'a superb father and grandfather' who was awarded the OBE in 2011 for 'a lifetime of good work [which] should not be whitewashed in one brushstroke'.